STARS ALIGN: With last night's megadeal, Carmelo Anthony -- who was on the other side when the Nuggets visited the Garden in December (above) -- becomes Amar'e Stoudemire's running mate with the Knicks. Photo: Jim McIsaac

STARS ALIGN: With last night’s megadeal, Carmelo Anthony — who was on the other side when the Nuggets visited the Garden in
December (above) — becomes Amar’e Stoudemire’s running mate with the Knicks. (Jim McIsaac)

Are there reasons not to like this? Of course there are.

The Knicks can go through reams of company letterhead and talk about how James Dolan, Donnie Walsh and Mike D’Antoni are closer than the Baldwin brothers and nobody can possibly believe this. This is a Dolan deal. Which means it’s an Isiah deal.

And, yes, that is discomfiting news. It’s hard to imagine a proud old basketball warrior like Walsh having any desire to spend even one more day under Dolan’s thumb than he’s contractually obligated to. And that’ll be a far steeper price than anything the Knicks surrendered last night to acquire Carmelo Anthony.

But the broader picture is this: The Knicks are supposed to be in the business of striving to win championships. Forget the lost decade that preceded this one; everything Walsh did in his first two years was designed to make that happen. At the time, it was all about LeBron James, as it should’ve been. But James chose South Beach over Southampton.

And that required a Plan B. Amar’e Stoudemire was an inspired start. But it’s important to look at this with clear eyes and an unbiased brain. Stoudemire alone wasn’t going to make the Knicks anything more than a playoff team.

You fell in love with this Knicks team this year? You should have. They made basketball interesting again at the Garden, made it watchable, made it fun. But there are two things you need to remember. One: For all the love, they are exactly two games over .500. Nobody just broke up the ’72 Lakers.

Also: Which of their potential first-round playoff opponents were they going to beat? Miami? Boston? Orlando? And guess what: Miami isn’t going to be getting any worse during the length of Stoudemire’s contract. To think you could grow a contender organically around him was ludicrous. That kind of thinking cost Patrick Ewing too many hopeless years in his prime.

There had to be a second star. Carmelo Anthony is undeniably a top-10 talent, and even better, he shares an important trait with Stoudemire: He wanted to be here. Wanted New York. Wanted the challenge. And he could be had now, in Year 1 of Stoudemire.

Is the exile of assets an epic haul? Sure it is. But ask yourself a couple of questions.

At what point did you talk yourself into Wilson Chandler being an All-Star? At season’s end, the Knicks were going to be faced with the choice of either losing him or offering him the kind of salary-cap-choking deal that ruined them in the first place.

Also: As terrific as Raymond Felton was, was he ever going to stand in the way of Chris Paul or Deron Williams? One last one: When the Knicks were playing at their best this year, Timofey Mozgov barely removed his warm-ups — when did you start thinking of him as the next Tim Duncan?

The loss that hurts the most is Danilo Gallinari. But this isn’t Brock-for-Broglio here, OK? The Knicks are getting Carmelo Anthony. Stars don’t come cheap. And think of this: If last summer, the Knicks had signed Stoudemire and no else (no Felton, no Mozgov), and then in October they had swapped Gallinari, Chandler and the picks for Anthony and Chauncey Billups, would that have been OK with you? I think it would’ve been more than OK.

Now, this is all prelude. The Knicks still need to actually acquire Paul or Williams, and even if both seem willing to fight it out in an octagon to earn the right to run the Knicks offense, that won’t happen for a while. Who will be the man who takes the reins from Walsh, and will it involve Isiah’s shadow government? It’s a fair worry. And nobody is inclined — rightly so — to give Isiah any slack.

But consider, just consider, this: The Knicks weren’t winning a title any time soon — make that ever — with the team they would have fielded sans Carmelo. And they may not win one even now; the Nuggets couldn’t throw in any guarantees.

But they’re in position to go for it now.

Forget everything else and focus on that. They’re closer this morning than they were yesterday. They had to get this done. And they did.